Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >Regardless of the value then, as now, a homesteader who uses what the 
> homestead produces to support the homestead and the homesteader, isn't 
> using 
> the agri-model.

Like the word 'homestead' we will offer our sundry defintions of 
'agri-model'.  My defintion is one in which the farmstead products are not 
self-sustaining, that is, they require outside influx of cash on which the 
homesteader hopes 
to turn a profit.

Under the homestead model, the homesteader works to coax the natural 
production out of the land while improving the fertility.  The model would 
fit your 
ancestors since they no doubt didn't buy beef-mix at the local cooparative.  
Under this model if your land could support 20 hens with its pastures, woods, 
what you can raise and gather, garden scraps, etc, then it is a homestead 
model, 
or a pastoral model, or a sustainable model.

But if you don't have any resouces from which to feed the hens and so you 
bought feed, bedding, etc. in hopes that the eggs will sell for substantially 
more than the fixed costs, that is the agri-business model.  

What you do with the money, in my taxonomy, is immaterial.  But, I stand pat 
on the challenge to show me where someone is paying all their expenses 
(including modern contrivances or not) from the natural productivity of their 
land 
without modern industrial-agricultural inputs.